DNA Banking for the 21st Century represents the proceedings of the U.S. Workshop on DNA Banking, funded by the National Science Foundation and held in St. Louis in January 2013. Twelve contributed chapters address the management, utilization, networking, and development of DNA banks and methods of curating tissue and DNA samples. A white paper of recommendations to the systematics community, based on discussions held at the workshop, proposes actions by collectors, researchers, and repositories that would collectively support the anticipated future needs of American scientists for taxonomically diverse, high-quality samples.